I'm back with version 3.0 of Mobile Industry Review!Ewan MacLeod “How to tweet your way out of a job http://tinyurl.com/d5372c deary me!” March 17 at 5:19 pm - Comment - Like Uh oh… - Ewan MacLeod
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Ewan MacLeod: “How to tweet your way out of a job http://tinyurl.com/d5372c deary me!” (via FriendFeed)
O2 UK has unveiled it’s new family oriented Joggler device, a 7″ touchscreen photo frame based on Openpeak’s OpenFrame platform and I jogged along to take a first look.
The screen on the Joggler is incredibly bright and crisp and the device itself feels very solid and well-made with a fixed sturdy stand on the back. Also on the back of the unit is a power socket (No batteries here, this is a wired device), an ethernet port and an audio out jack. On the side is a USB socket and on top is an LED but I didn’t see any applications taking advantage of this. Inside the device is powered by an Intel Atom processor, has WiFi connectivity and runs an O2 branded version of the OpenFrame software (which appears to be based on Ubuntu linux with hacking opportunities aplenty!).
Overall I found the Joggler to be a bit of a disappointment. I’m familiar with the OpenFrame platform this is based on and was expecting to find the same Flickr, YouTube and RSS content included. Unfortunately the only place the Joggler can show photos from is the built-in 1GB of storage or a USB stick. O2 are definitely downplaying the photo frame aspect of the Joggler and concentrating on the O2 Calendar integration which itself has a few disappointing aspects such as not having any sync capabilities. I think it’s safe to assume that any family that’s tech-savvy enough to buy one of these on launch has someone in it that already uses an online calendar such as that provided by Exchange or Google and it would make sense to sync with that calendar. The kids might not need to know that Daddy is in a meeting with his boss but at least some availability information would be useful. The biggest disappointment of all is that I know the OpenFrame platform has a Dominos Pizza button and the Joggler does not!
I think the Joggler is a good start to what is essentially a new market for MNOs but I can’t help but think that an untouched OpenFrame device would be more appealing to a wider audience. I certainly know of some other MNOs that are working on similar device offerings so this should be a very interesting market to watch over the next 12 months.
Alongside the Joggler, O2 announced the O2 Calendar, a free family oriented web-based service that is available to anyone in the UK regardless of them being an O2 customer or not. For those users who are O2 customers the service provides free SMS reminders of appointments and integrates with the Joggler device. O2 also announced a family bolt-on for existing customers allowing one person to pay a monthly fee to add a number of other O2 customers to their family group. Once part of the group every family member can make calls or send SMS or MMS to other members of the group completely free of charge.
The O2 Joggler will be available in April from O2 stores and their website priced £149.99 or free if taken instead of a handset when upgrading or signing a new 18 or 24 month contract. Pricing for the O2 family bolt-on has yet to be announced.
This question just in from a reader (oh alright, it’s my own question):
Can anyone recommend a company that can provide a few UK virtual mobile numbers with voice terminated over SIP and SMS over SMPP or some other API?
Preferably not numbers that are stupidly expensive to call and excluded from other MNO’s minutes buckets.
Let me know in the comments or via e-mail: dan.lane@mobileindustryreview.com
We’ve written about ZoomBak’s A-GPS based tracking service before and I’ve had a demo unit tracking my bag for the past few weeks.
The service consists of a tiny £99 black box that gets it’s own location using A-GPS and reports it back to ZoomBak’s servers using Vodafone’s UK network. From there you can track your car, bike, bag or dog (or spouse, child, enemy or anything else you manage to attach the ZoomBak locator to) via a website or SMS. The site also let you setup “safe zones” and you receive e-mail and SMS alerts when the ZoomBak enters or leaves those zones.
Some thought it was a bit pricey but for the peace of mind I actually thought it was reasonable value at £99 for the unit and £10/month service (with a £20 discount for a year’s service in advance) but that doesn’t really matter now as ZoomBak have announced that they are closing down their UK service. Everyone who bought a ZoomBak will be refunded their £99 purchase price and any service they had pre-paid for.
We were planning a big MIR Show feature (no, really. We’d lined up special guests and everything!) that revolved around the ZoomBak that we still might do if the service is still up when the date we’d booked comes around.
Any long-term MIR reader will know about SpinVox, the market leader in voice to text services. When he isn’t starring in our weekly video show, our very own James Whatley serves as SpinVox’s “Social Media Strategist” which should explain why SpinVox has wholly embraced social media in the last year or so, culminating in today’s release of ping.fm integration.
For those of you not familiar with Ping.fm, it’s a simple looking website with a powerful backend that integrates dozens of blogging, status and social websites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogger.com etc etc. In a single click you can push a short status update to all your profiles.
Personally, I love Ping.fm. Enough that when I first found out about it I setup an unofficial SMS interface for it so users can send Ping.fm a text message to update their statuses (more info on this here) but now, thanks to SpinVox, we don’t even need to tap out a message, simply call a number and, as their marketing message says, Speak Freely! SpinVox will convert your voice to text and Ping.fm will push that text to all of your profiles, optionally with a link to the original sound file.
It’s brilliant stuff but don’t take my word for it, sign up for ping.fm and give it a try for free at http://ping.fm/spinvox/
I snapped this shot with an HTC T-Mobile G1 while a chap from T-Mobile demo’d another G1 on-camera for the Mobile Industry Review show. The lighting in this room wasn’t great but it certainly wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The G1 camera has autofocus (unlike the iPhone) but apart from that it isn’t a fantastic camera when compared to other handsets coming out like the LG Renoir or the N96 (both also featured at this T-Mobile event).
Loads more G1 footage coming in Monday’s show 
Sony Ericsson held a global press conference yesterday to officially unveil their web-based episodical thriller (alright, they called them Webisodes) “Who is Johhny X?” and talk to us some more about the Xperia X1 smartphone.
The first two “webisodes” (there are nine all together, see what they did there? Nine home screen panels on the X1, nine webisodes) seemed well produced and of high quality. The storyline, however, is nothing new. Man wakes up with amnesia, man checks into hotel, man goes out and buys a new phone (predictably enough, the Xperia X1). Anyway, I suspect you don’t actually care about the webisodes as much as you do the handset, and if I’m wrong, you’ll soon be able to check them out for yourself at http://www.whoisjohnny-x.com/.
Since the event was being filmed in a room down the corridor from where we were watching inside the trendy members club The Hospital, we had the chance to get “hands-on” with senior product manager Magnus Andersson, who showed us his X1 handsets which he described as “The best of the best from Sony Ericsson”.
One of the major concerns from our last hands-on experience with the Xperia X1 was that the software was far too slow and this was something I was keen to see remedied in the retail units that Magnus was sporting. Unfortunately, after the briefest of fondles, not a lot seems to have changed. I counted a good 3 seconds between pressing the hardware “panels” button and the actual panel selection screen popping up and the 3D transitions between the panels themselves ran at a very poor frame rate. On the subject of those panels, for those that missed our video hands-on in episode 24 of the MIR show; the handset features a Sony Ericsson customised version of Windows Mobile that can switch between nine different “home screens” that I’ve heard SE reps refer to as panels or desktops interchangeably. In their demos Sony Ericsson is making a massive deal out of these panels but all three of the people I’ve spoken to who use a pre-release X1, including Magnus Andersson himself, admitted that they only used a couple of panels.
The handset itself is a very nice bit of kit and feels very solid and well built with a high quality slide mechanism (all the new Sony Ericsson sliders are blessed with very nice slide mechanisms) but for mobile geeks like us we know that it’s been widely reported that the X1 hardware is actually manufactured by HTC and with an off the shelf OS like Windows Mobile the only Sony Ericsson “innovation” with this handset (aside from some project management) seems to be the panel interface and the nifty media player based on the XMB interface (the same interface used in the PS3 and PSP games consoles). Speaking of HTC, I asked about their involvement in designing and building the product but was told that, while Sony Ericsson has relationships with hardware vendors, they don’t discuss them publicly.
This response seemed to be a trend as someone else asked if the X1 signaled the end of the P series (P800, P900, P910 etc) only to be told that Sony Ericsson doesn’t talk about future product lines.
However, despite my initial negative tone, I do think that this handset has a lot of appeal. If you’re already happy with a Windows Mobile handset and are looking to upgrade then you’re already familiar with the speed quirks of other Windows Mobile handsets and the Xperia X1 may very well turn out to be the best Windows Mobile device on the market, at least for a few months after it’s release. The same goes for those of you still using a P900/P800 series handset who don’t mind losing your UIQ software to upgrade to the next logical step in Sony Ericsson’s business device range. The media functionality isn’t really going to draw any buyers by itself, I can’t see anyone in their right mind looking at the iPhone next to the X1 and choosing the X1 unless they have a very strong aversion to Apple or the iPhone carrier of choice in their country.
We hope to have a review unit soon which we’ll thrust into the hands of various members of the MIR team to get their viewpoints but it won’t be long before you can get your own hands on the Xperia X1 as Sony Ericsson have announced the release date as the 30th of September in the UK, Germany and Sweden with further territories being announced in the coming months. Of course, we don’t know what the cost will be or even if any of their operator partners will be releasing the handset on the same day and, predictably, Sony Ericsson doesn’t publicly discuss wholesale pricing or operator release dates.
Did you read my post from last Monday about Phones 4U’s shockingly bad store layout that showed their customer’s details to passers-by? Well, Phones 4U must have because by Thursday last week they had shuffled their point of sale tables around to give their customers a much safer experience. The sales monitors do still face into the store but that’s a much easier place to spot nosy loiterers!
In fact, it took me longer to get my act together to take some photos of the new layout than it did for the Phones 4U staff to fix their issue. Well done
It can’t just be me that sees these things, can it? Have you noticed any silly lack of planning on at your local phone retailer?
